Fake Identity...

I was really shocked when we got told for our last assignment in contemporary media issues that we had to produce a fake online profile and interact using the profile through social networking such as facebook, twitter, youtube etc. We our working in groups of three, and sharing the one chracter between us however taking on different social networks for that character. Our character is called Riley Scott and we decided to create him as a typical Liverpool 'scally', someone who sits around without a Job, on the dole smoking weed all day! We thought this would be quite a fun charcter to play about with as he is nothing like any of us - Tom is fronting his facebook page, Niki is fronting a Tublr and Amy is fronting his Twitter! Me on the otherhand? well I have created a kind of 'girlfriend' for Riley Scott called Missy Jackson. Missy is just a kind of spin off character to make our main profile look real as she is meant to be his girlfriend yet he is interacting with all of these other females on different sites.

I now find this fake profile thing really funny as the whole of the year have created there online characters and we are now interacting with one another! 

Museum of Liverpool!..

We decided to make this fun we would open this debate up to the public as well as the people applying to the debate and so the set-up would be much like a courtroom and at the end of the debate the public can have a vote of who has the stronger argument! To keep the event going we said we would film all of the debates and then in a couple of months time invite back everyone who took part in the debate and maybe have an evening where they would watch back all the different debates that took part... also we could keep the facebook and/or twitter going and maybe have online debates on there!

A brief has been set for us where we have to create and exhabition to be displayed in the new 'Museum of Liverpool' based on the user group we are given! The museum only opened in July 2011 and therefore it is pretty new so I would think our creation would have to be quite quirky and fun! The Museum is a pretty basic set up, which i find very boring I think it needs something interesting to spice it up a little!

As the museum is free I would imagine there is a wide range of people who use the museum, maybe for school trips and tours! There is a range of user groups that we could of been given and we got 'Political Activists'  at first my imediate thoughts were 'OH DEAR. WHAT CAN WE DO?' I just thought that I dont really no much about this user group and I've always found polatics to be a quite boring subject?

Myself and Josh decided to stick it out and try and come up with different ideas, we decided that we would take a white board and do spinder diagrams of dfferent age groups of Political Activists, we wrote things down such as the kind of things different people would be more interested in and then decided to link them together to see if the groups had anything in common! This really helped as we found when we started coming up with different things that different people would be interested in, ideas for the exhabition started coming into our heads we didnt want to get ahead of ourselves though so we left it at that.

It then came to the time when we had to start working on our idea! We suprisingly found it pretty easy to come up with the base for our idea, we were thinking debate! However to start off with we thought that maybe hosting an online debate would be a good idea, their would be a live twitter page in the museum and a subject topic where people could argue for or against. We then decided that this wasnt very intresting but we still liked the idea of having a debate, finally we came up with the idea of holding a debating event.. This would mean the event would only run for around a week and there would be maybe five different debates you could attend, we also still wanted to link the online aspect of this into the event so thought about making a facebook group and/or twitter to help with promotion of this event. You would have to apply for the event online also whilst filling out a questionaire which would determine what debate best suits you and as the debates would be from famous historical polotical arguments the questionaire would also determine which political activist you best suit.

Personal Profiling...

We are on to our next fil in 'Production practice' however this one is a little bit different we have to find  a person that is 'interesting' so they could have a specific hobbie thats unusual or Job or Talent? I thought this would be quite interesting filming someone else, and seeing how we could use different shots to film and put it all together. There was just one problem - Who could we film?

We had a number of different ideas between the three off us, I suggested a family friend who owns a local nightclub in Liverpool 'CREAM' and host the festival 'creamfields' around the world. I thought he would be an interesting character as he has built the club up and taken it global. However he was out of the country at the time we wanted to film and so that idea went out of the window! Next we thought of a Photographer we could do and found this to be interesting as for the profile the person could not speak directly to the camera and so we thought filming some of his work and filming him whilst at work would be a good cover! Although we were also let down by him as he was working out of the city and it was too far for us to travel.. Last but not least we got intouch with a local actress who happends to be Amy's friend and she lives just over the water, this was easy enough and we travelled by car to do her interview in the comfort of her own home!

We got a good interview of her as being an actress she had such a clear voice and good pronunciation!.. Charlie 'the actress' had been in many productions and actually produced a few shows and so she had plenty to tell us, along with the interview we got footage of photographs of her shows and we also got to film a gig her and her sister played as she is also a muscian!

Web Designer...

I am currently in the process of creating my Website for 'Digital Media Tools' when we were given this assignment I was really nervous! I can do many things with a computer but I never in a million years thought I would be designing a website, it was all a bit overwhelming at first...

Usually I have all these brilliant Ideas and then when it comes to putting them into practice everything goes wrong or I end up biting of more than I can chew, so with this I decided to keep it plain and simple I just picked a really simple colour scheme and decided to have a front cover with two linking pages!

I have done a mock up of the front page of my Website in Photoshop to see how it will look when I come to produce it in Dreamweaver, if I do this with each page of my site it will be easier for me when i come to working with dreamweaver! However the annoying part is working with the 'layers' I will now have to save each layer individually to i can trasfer them over when making my website - which is sooo annoying!

On the whole I dont really think making a website is one of my favourite aspects to the course because I like things to be perfect and being new to photoshop and dreamweaver I cant get things exactly how I want them which is really frustraiting, I have my tutors head up the wall asking him how to do this and how to do that! Hopefully i will feel like I've achieved something once it all comes together!

Let's get cracking!  

IT'S LIVERPOOL...

Our next filimg project was called 'It's Liverpool' which was a shorter (approx 90 sec) film than the last one we produced, however it was still quite challenging to say the least! For this we decided we wanted to show Liverpool in every aspect and we thought how better to show the city than through a tour of Liverpool, we then looked at all the different tours that Liverpool had to offer and what would be the best way to capture Liverpool as a city...

At first we thought about filiming on the Mersey Ferry, but then even if we did get postion it would be quite risky with all the equiptment and the water etc so we decided against the idea. We then got in touch with the Liverpool City Tour Bus to see whether we would be able to film whilst on the tour as this would allow us to cover all the most important parts to the City. We were granted permission to film and allowed free access to the tour which was great! However on the day we were due to film it was raining and rain and an open top bus do not go well. However we re-schedualed getting a lot of good shots plus a good day out!

Google Stories?....

Wednesday 11th January
We use google for quite alot of things, we use if for wikipeidia, we use it to find directions, we use it to view places on google maps! Google maps however is NOT just for finding a place, as I have come to discover you can actually tell stories through using Google maps and this is exactly what we did for our next assignment. We where given a location in Liverpool and then we had to tell a story across five different locations using Google Maps, the locations we choose could be anywhere in the world however our first loaction was none negotiable. The location given to us was the 'Anglican Cathedral' so then we had to think of a way to link this location to other locations in the world. I thought it would be quite boring to just link the location to other cathedrals in the world noting a bit about their history and what not - it wouldnt be something I was interested in looking at!

Therefore we decided to look at the architect behind the cathedral! Sir Giles Gilbert Scott was actually quite a well known architect and is known for a list of amazing buildings and even the famous red phone boxes. We then came up with an idea to pick four of the buildings we thought had most influence on his life or had and influence to society or people around him, we included his family home that he had also designed! Then we created diary entries as though we were Scott and wrote how we thought he would be feeling at the time he was desgining these buildings or what he thought of the outcome! I found this interesting, mainly because i didnt know that you could actually do this on Google Maps but also because I found out alot about a person who was very influencial who I never knew!

Game Complete...

Tuesday 6th December
We have completed the Prezi for are game, this explains how the games works and what its main selling points are.. Overall I am pretty pleased with the way everything turned out and we have a lot of good information included in the Prezi! The animation that I done was pretty time consuming and I was dissapointed with the outcome because i found it was too quick and didnt really show off the game. Therfore the changes that I would make would be to slow this right down so that people could get a good idea of how the game would be played...

Here is the link to our completed Prezi...

http://prezi.com/nxgi0tohwp_l/present/?auth_key=fmhyspp&follow=o2j8ahbrkcrf

Film Complete...

Monday 5th December
Today was the deadline for our film and we had to have it completely finished by 2pm today! We hadnt quite grasped the whole editing thing but we were definately getting there and with the few hours we had we manged to finish of capturing the footage whilst spicing our film up to the right standard. We decided to add the song 'Bad Day' to the film as it completely fitted with the theme starting the song from the middle, which fell on Tom standing on the mirrior starting his 'Bad Day'! We then had to burn it on to a CD once it was complete which was the easiest part to the editing and also the quickist!
Our Films where then shown in class and by the response of everyone I think we portrayed the story quite well, no one looked confused!!

Ending the Celebrations...

Tuesday 29th Novemeber
Today is the final day we get to experiment with the celebrations! Last week we got all the pictures take and sore bellys too... it was worth it! So today was just a case of putting them all in order and making the animation. This was the tricky bit! After uploading the pictures to the computer and puting them in order we decided to flick through them really quickly to see if the story came across which i think it did reallly well! The story included: Someone (ME) opening a box of celebrations the celebrations then come alive out of the box one by one, they then seem to move about in this little circle and appear to change into the same chocolate but in a bar form! The only downside is we would have liked to created a smoking effect for when the chocolates are moving about in a circle to make it look as though they are moving really fast! We didnt get round to this put if we had the chance to do this again I know we ould spend more time with this effect! Overall i think the animation turned out pretty well although there are some tweeks that need finishing off, it needs slowing down etc. On the whole though I'm very pleased :)

Let the games begin....

Tue 29th November Today we tested our game; we did this by making a prototype as our final piece is due in next week! To do this we used cardboard and made a maze type model of our game, colouring in the cardboard and sticking the cut-outs in all the right places. We then used Lego people to capture shots of them as though they were playing the game, this would help us make a stop frame animation to show how you would play the game in real life!

                                                      This is an image of our Proto-type

We had to think about certain things when we were coming up with the rules of the games and decide how we would make the game have potential. We discussed the following questions:
How do we know what to do? - There will be a rule board before you enter the game, also someone will be there to issue the rules in case anyone is unsure. The idea is pretty much the same as traditional pac-man so would not be too hard to follow.

What type of experience is it? - We want people to feel excitement like the kind of thrill you had when you were a child playing hide and seek.

What raises the tension? - The thrill of trying to escape.

How do we know when it is finished? -If you get all the lights out, if you escape, or if you get caught! The game is then immediately over leaving one winner!

Each one of us has now taken on a role so we can get the assignment done quickly and productively. My Role is to capture the images and putting them into stop frame animation, Nicki is starting on the Prezi and Amy is designing the costumes for the game.

Learning by mistakes...

Monday 28th Novemeber

 The disaster of all disasters happend to us in terms of editing today, which was a real nightmare! None of us new how to use the editing software as it is still prety much very new to us, and so it took us a very long time to figure out what was the most effective way of editing our film! I think the worst part was the capturing which we all seemed to agree on as we captured for over 3 hours!! The computer was not on our side, it continued to freeze and then when it didnt freeze it was skipping and jumping the footage we had captured... With the technican on hand (and she was called every 10 minutes) we found out that this was only through fault of our own! We were supposed to leave 5-10 seconds free filming before our footage, and we sure learned from our mistake as although we edited the film together bits where missing and it didnt quite flow and so we had to go back and get more footage. Thankfully I think our Film turned out to be a pretty good production of what we can do as a group, and it certainly wont be the same mistake!

Celebrate good times.. COME ON!

Tuesday 22nd November
Today we started our animation with Celebrations, this is one of my most exciting projects yet! I think I persuaded Amy that we should do our animation with the choclates because Im a BIG chocoholic and the idea was of a person eating the chocolates and then them coming to life! - which meant i got to eat them hehehehe. We had real fun with this project, although it did take time as we had to keep the camera in the same position for each capture and then when we moved the camera it had to be in the perfect direction and at the right angle so when we come to put it together it all flows. We had over 100 pictures and two food babys but we will continue with the pictures next week!